I didn't even know about Limnic Eruptions (sudden eruptions of CO2 from lakes that asphyxiate everything nearby).

You clearly have not been reading enough weird science.

Poor Haiti sometimes seems like a great cosmic experiment in misery.

San Francisco's 1906 Earthquake, Now In Color

Photos were taken 6 months after the earthquake.

This is fascinating--the Chicago Reader has newspaper clips from a rash of testicle-removing assaults that happened in Chicago in 1922. The papers didn't actually call them "testicles," though; they used the term "gland" instead. Having two balls cut off was a "double gland" theft.

work is annoying me. I am researching trips for my 40th birthday next year.

I will likely donate to MSF/DWB.

"if you can smell what the rock is cookin'" RANDOM and now Jump Around is stuck in my head.

You've transformed into my ex-girlfriend!

To backtrack a little, I appear not to watch comedies on tv. I don't know when I stopped. They just don't really interest me much.

I don't see movies in the theater, either, unless they are in some way larger than life. Comedies, rom-coms, even intimate mysteries or psychological thrillers I see on dvd or streamed. Theaters are for spectacle, from LotR to Bourne. Of course I ordinarily have little compulsion to see a movie when it's first released. I tend to wait till all the excitement has dimmed and the throngs thinned a bit.

--I'm no fun at all.

YOU ARE SO MUCH FUN!

Poor Haiti sometimes seems like a great cosmic experiment in misery.

Not so much a cosmic experiment as a joint U.S. French experiment. Among the highlights: part of the debt Haiti still pays today are reparations to France for the loss of French property in freeing slaves. One of the reasons Aristide was overthrown is he wanted to repudiate that portion of Haitis debt as "odious debt". Another cause is "free trade" that turned Haiti from a horribly poor, but food self-sufficient nation to a large net importer of food. And yes this ties to the earthquake deaths. Natural catastrophes happen, but deaths from them are normally contributed to by social and economic circumstance. For example the huge mudslides that resulted from the earthquakes are largely due to deforestation. The plants that would have held the mud back were harvested for fuel due to desperate poverty. Similarly poverty and failed civil society is a a large part of why almost no buildings in Haiti could stand up to earthquakes.

Not to mentions U.S. actions over the years in overthrowing attempts at democracy.

It never occurred to me that Jamaica would feel the quake. I checked carefully to see if they were mentioned as under threat from tsunami, but no. My sister reports that people in taller buildings did and evacuated. No damage done, though.

Typo Boy, thank you so much for making those connections.